My view is that the poor American work ethic and comparatively high wage expectations is endogenous to the trade and currency regime.

Similarly, the good Chinese and Taiwanese work ethic may be endogenous to the same things.

But, just because American labor isn't competitive, does that mean we should give up? I bet if you get rid of some of the social safety nets, and reduce funding to useless educational ventures... you can potentially rebound the human capital stock pretty quickly.

Politics is the tricky part of it... Americans are so accustomed to certain entitlements that politically you may not survive to execute your plans.